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Has McIver’s appointment come too late for Morrisons?

Posted in Marketing, Creative, Nikki Preston, Latest reporters' blogs September 6th, 2007 by Nikki Preston

Six months later after announcing it was planning to bring in a heavy-weight marketer to spearhead its rebrand and new marketing strategy, Morrisons has finally appointed Angus McIver as its new marketing and communications director.

But hang on – what is the Prudential marketer actually going to do when he takes over the role later this year as the supermarket chain has already rebranded and launched a new campaign that aims to highlight the newly adopted freshness strategy?

Morrisons also only appointed Delaney Lund Knox Warren as its new creative agency last year so it wouldn’t make much sense to start all over again, especially as the group has most likely dished out a large sum to have Denise Van Outen’s blonde mane and smiley face in the first execution of the campaign.

With all this having already been rolled out, it doesn’t really leave much room for the new guy on the block to really wow with his creative genius.

Although McIver joins from a straight-laced insurance company where he has held the role of UK marketing director for a mere five months, he has also ten years experience at crisp brand Walkers as the customer insight chief.

His claim to fame at Walkers was launching its premium crisp brand Sensations, which used another British starlet Victoria Beckham in its ads. Well at least he wasn’t responsible for hiring Gary Linneker!

With it being highly unlikely that Morrisons will let him give the retailer another makeover so soon I can only wonder whether he will be drawing on his roots and launching new consumer products and services – do I smell a Morrisons’ Local or Morrisons’ Mobile store fleet in the oven?

The alternative is that the current marketing head Michael Bates may be on the move soon as until now he has overseen Morrisons’ marketing developments, but he does not hold board level status unlike his new boss.

To read the related news story go to mad.co.uk